Many kinds of bag opening and emptying machine are known. Commonly encountered problems include the need to orientate and position the bags with some accuracy before presenting them to the cutting means. Also, an often occurring problem is that the bags accidentally retain at least some of their granular product material, after the cutting and opening thereof, on account of the way in which the bag is cut or subsequently manipulated for emptying, thus leading to inefficiencies due to waste.
Another drawback of prior art bag slitting machines, is that they are usually not suitable for food grade application, since in such applications, at least some of the entire bag conveyor assembly, cutter assembly and/or empty bag compactor, are exposed to the food during opening and emptying of the food material inside the bag, thus leading to high likelihood of contamination hazard of the food material from external contaminants before economical reclaim of the food material.
Moreover, known bag slitting machines usually cannot be washed or dried without any impurities left over. In particular, in prior art slitting machines, the male cam rollers enter and exit the full loaded bag slitting and emptying chamber, and slide over the stationary female cams, thus undesirably creating conditions for accidental contamination of the product released from the bag.
Also, existing designs of bag slitting machines are complex, including many nuts and bolts, gaskets, PVC belting, washers, and others, which increase the risk of maintenance downtime.